The system adds more abuse and exploitation

by chris60
(Australia)

Unfortunately, many people who attempt to receive help for incest find themselves confronted by a system that exacerbates their symptoms and confusion. Treatment is expensive and painful and often ineffective or traumatic and damaging. Moreover, the victims are stigmatised by professionals and friends alike as damaged and sick once they seek care. The nine psychiatrists I stumbled across either tried to seduce me or reduce me, claimed that I was too stupid to study, too sick to work, a danger to children in my care as a teacher, and unworthy of respect or proper treatment. I was condemned for being compliant and seeking care and then condemned for being defiant and aggressive. i learned to keep my past to myself and mask my feelings and feel ashamed for being damaged and abnormal. Not one professional suggested that the abuse was not my fault, and the men and women tended to protect colleagues who had made sexual advances or been verbally or psychologically abusive or disbelieved the secondary victimisation and its additional impact on my ability to trust. I entered with good faith and left with grave misgivings about a system that empowers and financially rewards people who neglect and abuse their clients more. Meanwhile the state keeps paying them and they assume the tag of worthy healers to their unworthy sick client base. what can I say? Sexualisation and abuse of power is rampant in the world and sending someone who has suffered into an office to experience more invalidation and abuse is reprehensibly absurd. My most recent attempt to find help involved seeking a local doctor for a referral. Her health-care plan claimed I engaged in drug abuse (I had been clean for decades) and had a homosexual relationship. no mention was made of incest or domestic violence or the fact that I was in an abusive relationship with a m an who refused to let me go while she jotted down her notes. In short, I was written off as a sexually deviant junky. Do not share yourself with anyone incapable of understanding your true value as a human being deserving of care and respect. My dignity has been seriously compromised by a system that stigmatises and traumatises those it claims to help. Keep knocking and searching until you find someone worthy and wise enough to provide adequate care. Even a chance encounter with a stranger may offer more warmth, compassion and understanding than the meagre scraps offered by those invested in money and power over genuine concern for other people. I am tired of repeating my story to strangers who refuse to listen and appear incapable of genuine care.